Chapter 43
Terminally Ill, but It's Okay — Episode 43
The basement of the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, marked with a sign reading "Authorized Personnel Only."
So Yi-hyeon wore an unconvinced expression as she went over the horrors of that day again.
As one hour, then two, slipped uselessly by, her adjutant finally lost patience and grumbled.
"Vice-Commander. Please, call it a night. Hasn't this case already been closed as an internal power struggle within the Exorcism Society? It's already eleven. Eleven."
"Already?"
No wonder her eyes kept going blurry.
"Fine. Then let's check it one last time. First, the Bomb Demonkin had camped out here to carry out the terrorist attack."
So Yi-hyeon rose from her seat and snapped her fingers.
With a flash of bluish light, all the information gathered so far was synthesized and replayed like a film.
The Bomb Demonkin was on her knees with her hands braced on the ground, and then an unidentified adversary—commonly called the Dagger Demon—entered and hurled a blade.
A lightning-swift strike with no obvious windup.
BOOM—!
The sudden explosion knocked the lightning-fast strike off course, but the Dagger Demon didn't give up and launched the blade again.
This time, as if he had put real power behind the attack, what looked like three or four daggers shot toward the Bomb Demonkin.
But success remained far off once again.
A powerful explosion erupted as though she intended to take them both down, wrenching every dagger off course.
"This is the key point."
So Yi-hyeon paused the replay and pointed to a deep horizontal gouge.
Her adjutant asked back.
"Because of the traces of mana left in the sword mark?"
"Right. Because it's inherently impossible for a Demonkin to use mana."
"Then....... what about the possibility that there were two adversaries? For example, suppose an Awakener threw the dagger, and a Demonkin who followed behind handled the Bomb Demonkin......."
It was a fairly novel idea, but So Yi-hyeon shook her head firmly.
"No. No matter how I look at it, there are only traces of one person entering. If anything......."
"If anything?"
"It makes more sense to assume it was someone capable of handling both Demonic Energy and mana."
"Excuse me?"
The adjutant, who had been blinking speechlessly, soon burst into laughter.
"Pff-hahaha. No, Vice-Commander, are you serious? That's something out of a fairy tale......."
"......Are you laughing?"
"Ahem. I apologize."
When the adjutant hastily shut his mouth, So Yi-hyeon didn't press him further.
No—she couldn't.
Because even by her own reckoning, it was an absurd view.
Where in the world was there a person who possessed both Demonic Energy and mana?
It was an outlandish setup that could only be borrowed from some founding myth.
"But has that student still not contacted you? If he witnessed anything, it would be an important clue."
"Who?"
"Park...whatever-his-name-was. The student who warned you about the possibility of a second terrorist attack."
"Ah, the sorcerer-family kid......."
So Yi-hyeon smiled faintly, recalling the navy-haired Taehak student.
Honestly, she owed him no small debt.
Thanks to him, she had been able to stay focused on her assigned duty without getting swept up in the chaos.
But a reply didn't seem likely to come.
He didn't seem like the sociable type.
"Why don't I just go find him?"
If she asked Cheon Seo-yoon, she could probably arrange a simple meeting.
Once her thoughts reached that point, So Yi-hyeon picked up her phone.
She called Cheon Seo-yoon, partly to check whether she had returned safely.
Ring— ring— ring—
The customer's phone is turned off, so your call will be connected to voicemail—
But this side was unreachable as well.
"This kid left without even saying goodbye, and now her phone's off. Did something happen?"
* * *
At the same time.
Cheon Seo-yoon had cried herself to sleep and now drifted in the blurred boundary between dream and reality.
After a draining lethargy swept over her, as if her whole body were soaked in water, her hazy vision sharpened, and Cheon Seo-yoon suddenly realized she was sitting in a chair.
"What? Wasn't I in the dorm?"
It was strange.
Very much so.
Just moments ago, she had definitely been in complete darkness.
It was too vivid to be a dream, and too absurd to be real.
Cheon Seo-yoon quickly surveyed her surroundings.
And a completely transformed scene met her eyes.
But what was this?
"Ugh."
At that moment, Cheon Seo-yoon scrunched up her face with a short yelp.
Feeling a chill run down her spine, she rubbed the goosebumps rising on her forearms.
"No, what the......."
She couldn't help it.
....... Because everything around her was pink, pink, pink.
What was this, some Pink Demonkin's room?
The bed in front of her, the lace canopy draped over it, the rug beneath, the drawers on top of it, the desk.
Even the clock hanging on the wall.
There wasn't a single thing that wasn't pink, to the point of making her dizzy.
"Damn it."
Cheon Seo-yoon recoiled and stepped back.
She wasn't overreacting.
Pink was a color she hated almost pathologically; simply looking at it made her nauseous.
Dream or no dream, getting out came first.
Cheon Seo-yoon looked around, searching for the way out.
But then.
"......."
Her hurried steps stopped at that moment.
A full-length mirror stood in one corner of the room.
In it stood a strangely familiar little girl, eyes wide as she hesitated and drew back.
What is this.......
Cheon Seo-yoon stared blankly, forgetting even the fact that she was wearing a pink dress.
Then she approached step by step and pressed her hand to the mirror.
The girl's hand rose in unison.
Cheon Seo-yoon's lips moved faintly as she murmured in a weak voice.
"....... That's me."
That was right.
The girl was Cheon Seo-yoon as a child—a fragment of a memory so old it had grown hazy.
Maybe that was why?
Cheon Seo-yoon soon realized the identity of this bizarre space.
"The main house."
Specifically, the room of the young Cheon Seo-yoon who had dreamed of being a princess, and the day she lost someone precious.......
The scene of the incident. That pink secret hideaway, stained with blood on every side.
Realizing why she had always hated that bright, warm color so intensely, Cheon Seo-yoon shuddered.
Then, in the end, she sank down helplessly.
....... Why in the world had she come here?
No, more importantly—why had she become younger?
"I definitely enrolled at Taehak....... and besides, today......."
It was just as Cheon Seo-yoon was retracing that especially hard day.
Suddenly a violent headache struck, and her thoughts warped.
"Ugh."
And then the reversal began.
"....... So....... I....... definitely......."
Dream into reality, and reality back into dream.
"....... Oh, no? Right....... this isn't some drama."
Why would Uncle do that to Dad.......
Cheon Seo-yoon soon nodded and convinced herself.
Then.......
Cheon Seo-yoon held her breath, filled with hope, then exhaled until she felt there was nothing left inside.
"Thank god. Truly......."
So all those days had been nothing but a single night's dream.
Cheon Seo-yoon finally set down the burden she had carried all this time.
And smiled.
The girl in the mirror smiled too.
It was just as they were smiling at each other.
Knock, knock, knock.
A crisp knock sounded, and a door she hadn't even realized was there opened.
As the gap widened, light seeped in, and a person walked in through that light.
That face she had always missed, but had gradually been forgetting.......
Did she even need to explain how much she had wanted to see him?
"......."
Cheon Seo-yoon's eyes reddened.
She gripped her own forearm hard enough to crush it, and when she felt the pain, she rushed forward joyfully.
She wanted to hurry into his arms and tell him she'd had a long dream, that it had been so hard.
She was just about to ask him to hurry and hold her.
But then.
Rooooar—
In an instant, a searing heat surged in, as if her flesh were cooking.
Dark-red flames burst out without warning and swallowed the entire space.
Then she, and even the one she had finally met, were dyed ash-gray, and everything crumbled and scattered as if it had never existed from the start.
"Ah."
Cheon Seo-yoon desperately flailed her remaining stubby little arm, trying to grab hold of something.
But there was no way she could catch anything.
.
.
In the end, just as she was collapsing from exhaustion, her eyes snapped open.
"......."
And what she faced was the Taehak dormitory, in complete darkness.
The damp, cold feel of the pillow suddenly jolted her back to reality.
A nightmare so vicious it was cruel to call it a dream.
....... But was reality any different?
Cheon Seo-yoon, who had been gasping for breath, soon turned over and lay still.
Dream or reality, she'd lost her purpose all the same.
* * *
In the original work, Radeon was called the Demonkin of Will.
It was a nickname given because he controlled swords freely, as if he had imbued them with his will.
For that reason, titles like Demonkin of the Flying Sword Art, Demonkin of the Sword Dance, Demonkin of the Bare Hand, and so on followed him.
I remember all sorts of miscellaneous epithets trailing after him.
But.......
All of that is bullshit.
His true trait was none other than dexterity.
It was the ability to handle skillfully whatever he held in his hands.
In a sense, it was a trait somewhat removed from combat, but Radeon, who had always thirsted for greater power, eventually combined Cheonjam Thread with the art of flying daggers after much deliberation.
After that, he was reborn as a Demonkin powerful enough to gain the upper hand even against a Tier 4 Awakener.
He wielded up to fifteen flying daggers like his own limbs and flew across the battlefield.
That's not a figure of speech—he really flew.
"He used Cheonjam Thread as a movement tool too."
Like a certain movie superhero swinging between the skyscrapers of New York.
Anyway, the combat style I'm pursuing isn't much different.
Roam freely across the battlefield while deploying First Sword and Second Sword. Beyond that, bombard the enemy with sorcery from midair.......
['Greed' says that a Demonkin's trait is unique and cannot be imitated.]
Ah, you startled me.
I flinched at the message that suddenly appeared.
The little glutton normally ignored anything that wasn't food, but the mention of Demonkin seemed to have piqued its interest.
I nodded and answered.
"That's true. But I don't need it. I already have a better trait."
['Greed' tilts its head.]
[It says its master has no trait of that kind.]
Is that so?
Thinking it would be better to show than to tell, I took out the bundle of Cheonjam Thread.
I pulled them out one by one and laid them out. Each was a little over one meter long, twenty strands in total.
For now, I only needed one strand, so I set the rest aside.
"Open your eyes wide and watch carefully."
I took a calm, deep breath and activated Manifestation.
At once, shimmering particles of manifestation appeared.
Instead of visualizing an object, I reached out my hand first.
I grabbed a fistful of manifestation particles—like dipping them in dye, I suppose?
As a test, I sent them flowing toward the Cheonjam Thread I was holding.
Then the sparkling particles of light responded to my will.
They clung to it as if seeping in, and as a result, the thread, which had been extremely thin, gave off a soft glow like a trail of light.
With that, preparations were complete.
Now it was time to move the manifestation particles and command the Cheonjam Thread.
Just as Radeon had moved Cheonjam Thread to wield flying daggers.......
As befitting a method I had devised after much thought, my version would naturally be superior in performance.
Controlling it with my mind rather than my hands would be far more precise.
['Greed' slaps its knee and gets up.]
I smirked and focused.
Wishing for the Cheonjam Thread to wrap around the Nameless Shaman's Bracelet, I infused a tiny amount of mana into it.
Ssssh.
And it really moved.
The Cheonjam Thread rose on its own and began winding around the bracelet.
"Oh."
First mission: success.
Not only did it carry out the command without error, but the response was so fast it might as well have been simultaneous with my thought. I liked that a lot.
"Next......."
I decided to test a slightly more complex function.
First, I created a scarecrow five meters ahead, then recalled a scene from a movie.
The Cheonjam Thread would shoot from my hand, wrap around the dummy, then contract again, using the pulling force to launch me forward in one burst....... Something like that.
This time, too, it was almost simultaneous.
Fwish—
In an instant, the Cheonjam Thread shot out like a beam of light and coiled tightly around the scarecrow.
The moment it contracted, my body was yanked into the air before I could even register it, and I was dragged toward it in a flash, as if tethered to an arrow.
But maybe because the speed exceeded my expectations?
In the split second of "Huh?" I crashed straight into it.
CRUNCH.
I clutched my face and tumbled across the floor.
"Ah, shit."
It hurt.
It really hurt.
The hit hurt even more because it caught me completely unguarded.
Heh heh.
But the pain only distracted me for a moment. Soon I was laughing despite it.
This pathetic body of mine aside—
The combination of Cheonjam Thread and Manifestation itself had been flawless.
['Greed' shakes its head from side to side and enters sleep mode.]
I chuckled for a while, then suddenly sat up.
Because, as a die-hard fan of hero movies, another scene had come to mind.